Managed to get your hands on an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card? You’re lucky, considering just how difficult it has been to find them since they launched. But now that you’re ready to upgrade your gaming PC and enjoy amazing graphics, you’ll need to check whether your power supply can handle it.
So, here’s a quick guide on the typical power consumption of an RTX 3080, so you can make sure your build won’t struggle.
How Many Watts Does An RTX 3080 Use?
At its peak, the RTX 3080 graphics card will draw around 340 watts of power. It will draw much less when idle – normally around 10 watts with a single monitor connected, or 20 watts if you’re running multiple monitors.
If you’re using your PC to watch videos, then the power draw will ramp up very slightly, to around 27 watts – still quite low. But it’s when you start gaming that you’re actually putting your graphics card to proper use, with an average power draw of 320 watts, often pushing to that 340-watt maximum if you’re using maximum settings.
It’s also important to acknowledge that the maximum rating doesn’t mean that’s the maximum the card will ever draw. Components will sometimes spike for less than a second, and the RTX 3080 has been captured at drawing 377 watts during one of these spikes.
This is why you need to make sure you’ve got some extra capacity in your PC’s power supply, to handle these spikes [Source].
How Many Watts Does An RTX 3080 Use Per Hour?
When gaming, an RTX 3080 graphics card uses 320 – 340 watt-hours per hour, or 0.32 – 0.34 kilowatt-hours per hour. With the average gamer playing for 8.5 hours every week, this means that the graphics card uses around 2.5 kilowatt-hours per week.
That’s just the graphics card though, and you’ve got to consider the whole rest of the PC when you’re working out how much energy you’re using on an hourly basis.
There’s no real point in installing an RTX 3080 into a system that doesn’t have a high-end processor or a lot of RAM – you’re never going to make the most of it, because you need all three to be good if you want to run the latest games. And while the power draw of RAM is pretty low, a top-end processor could easily draw almost 200 watt-hours per hour as well.
Read more: How Many Watts Does A Gaming PC Use?
What Is The Difference Between RTX 3080 And RTX 3080 Ti?
The RTX 3080 Ti is an upgraded version of the RTX 3080. It has more CUDA cores – 10,240 compared to the 8,704 of the RTX 3080 – which means it is significantly more powerful, almost as good as an RTX 3090.
In terms of actual gaming performance, you can expect around a 10% increase in frame rate when playing on maximum settings if you use an RTX 3080 Ti instead of an RTX 3080. But it also draws a lot more power.
| Graphics Card | Idle | Idle (multi-monitor) | Streaming video | Gaming | Max-rated | Spikes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 3080 | 10 watts | 20 watts | 27 watts | 320-340 watts | 340 watts | 377 watts |
| RTX 3080 Ti | 16 watts | 30 watts | 28 watts | 355-360 watts | 360 watts | 457 watts |
In case you’re wondering what “Ti” stands for, it’s a shortened form of Titanium. That’s just the name of the range, it doesn’t mean that there is more Titanium used in the graphics card than the non-Ti versions.
What Power Supply Do I Need For An RTX 3080?
Realistically you need at least a 750-watt power supply for an RTX 3080 but it would be better to get at least an 850-watt power supply to handle power spikes. When buying a PSU rated this highly it’s even more important to buy an efficient one, at least 80+ Gold.
If you’re using a 650-watt power supply you may find that it works, but you could notice that your PC starts to misbehave, either running a little slow or randomly restarting. If that’s the case, it shows that your power supply is overloaded and can’t provide all the power needed for your components.
Because you’re dealing with a high-power draw, it’s essential that you buy a PSU that isn’t wasting extra power.
The efficiency rating of a PSU determines how much extra power it has to draw to power your system. 80+ is an absolute minimum, but if you get a better one (Gold, Platinum, or even Titanium) then you’ll be wasting less power overall.
Read more: Power Supply Ratings Explained
The Best Power Supply For An RTX 3080
When you’re buying a power supply for an RTX 3080, make sure you get one that’s at least 850 watts. While a 750-watt PSU might be fine, if you’re buying new then the cost difference is minimal, so that extra 100 watts of capacity makes sense. You should also get one rated at least 80+ Watts Gold if you can.
This Corsair HX Series power supply is a great choice. Corsair is an excellent manufacturer of PC parts, and it’s rated for up to 850 watts, plenty for your high-end rig with an RTX 3080 graphics card. It’s 80+ Platinum certified, meaning it’s efficient and won’t waste loads of electricity.
It’s also fully modular, so you only need to add the cables you want to use, without having to hide away extra hardwired cables around the back of the PC. It’s got plenty of ports to power your RTX 3080 along with any other PCI components you might have.
What RTX 3080 Power Cable Do I Need?
RTX 3080 graphics cards will need 8-pin PCIe power cords run from your power supply. Depending on the model it will need either two or three of these cables. You need to make sure that you connect cables to all the ports on your RTX 3080 graphics card or it won’t work.
It’s something to bear in mind when buying an RTX 3080 – make sure your power supply has enough PCIe cables to support it. That’s another reason you may need to upgrade, or remove any other PCI cards you have installed. And if you’re using custom-colored cables, you’ll need to ensure you’ve enough so that they match.
RTX 380 Power FAQs
Technically, a 650-watt PSU may be enough to run an RTX 3080 for most uses but it’s not recommended. You’ll be pushing the limits of a PSU at this level. Most graphics card manufacturers recommended at least a 750W PSU for an RTX3080, with some saying you need 850W.
If you’re interested in crypto mining, an RTX 3080 would be enough to mine Ethereum. It’s recommended that you have at least a GTX 1070, so a mining rig with an RTX 3080 should be a lot more efficient, although not as good as dedicated mining PCs with multiple graphics cards.
Depending on the game, an RTX 3080 may be able to run it at 4K with frame rates close to 144fps, but this is still rare. Most games, even with this powerful hardware, will manage a frame rate closer to 70fps when played on a 4K resolution.
An RTX 3080 can support up to four monitors at once, either with two HDMI ports and two DisplayPorts, or one HDMI and three DisplayPorts. If you’re concerned about power consumption, bear in mind the extra cost of running four monitors at once. A single large OLED may be more energy efficient.